Firecrakers

I grew up on a farm near Oakland, Tennessee. At that time, about 300 people lived in the town. Oakland had two grocery stores. Granddaddy owned one of the stores. Most of the people that came in his store worked on farms or at the cotton gin. People from the farms chopped weeds in their fields during the summer and hand-picked cotton in the fall. Granddaddy let the people get food and pay later. He wrote the cost of the groceries in a charge book. After the cotton was harvested and the workers received their money, they paid Granddaddy for their bills. Harvest time was also when people had money to buy extra things like new shoes. The train came through town every day and the engineer blew his whistle to warn cars crossing the tracks. The two grocery stores, post office, barber shop and bank were in straight row facing the railroad tracks. A small road ran in front of the businesses for people to park their cars. Beyond the road were two big trees and stacks of wood cross ties used to repair the railroad. When the farm workers came to town for lunch, they bought bologna and bread at his store for sandwiches. Their favorite place to eat on hot, summer days was in the shade under the trees by the railroad tracks.

Before closing each day, Granddaddy put old bread from his store in the box. The next morning, the bread man came by early, picked up the old bread, and left fresh loaves on top of the box. In the picture, I was holding an ice cream sandwich in my hand. I still like eating them.

I loved to spend time with Granddaddy at the store and go fishing with him and Grandma on Thursdays when their store was closed. My jobs at the store were stamping the prices on the tops of food cans. I also helped Earnest sweep the floors and sorted glass drink bottles that people returned for deposit money.

Summer was an exciting time. I was out of school and I could usually find something fun to do with my friends, Sugar Foot and Fred, who lived in town. Sugar Foot's mom worked at the bank down the street from Granddaddy's store. Fred's dad worked at the gin.

Fireworks were not sold in Oakland but Mom took Johnny and me to a store at Whiteville in the next county to buy them before the Fourth of July. My favorite kind of firecracker was Black Cat. Sugar Foot and Fred had also been to get firecrackers.

Saturday was the day for most country people to come to town to shop, and the sidewalks were usually full. One Saturday morning in June, my friends and I played with sparklers and firecrackers in front of Granddaddy's store. After a while, people started to complain about the loud noise and smoke. Granddaddy told us to move across the street under the trees by the railroad tracks.

We decided to have a contest to see who could come up with the best way to shoot firecrackers. Sugar Foot found an empty can from one of the field worker's lunches and put a firecracker under it. Neat. Sometimes a firecracker did not explode but just hissed with sparks out of one end. We called those firecrackers "duds".

Fred had more firecrackers than Sugar Foot and me. He put a whole pack of firecrackers on the ground and lit them at the same time. Pow! Pow! Pow!

Then I had a new idea. I said, "Let's see who can throw a firecracker into the tree hole above our heads." It was better than I imagined. The noise from the exploding firecrackers in the tree hole sounded like a cannon!

We did not know that the tree was hollow on the inside. After a firecracker landed in the hole it rolled deep in the trunk. A few minutes after we started, I heard a faint hissing sound from a dud deep in the old tree.

The first sign of trouble was a small puff of smoke coming from the hole in the tree. Then hundreds of giant ants and roaches began crawling out of the hole.

I looked at Sugar Foot and Fred, and told them that we need help. Fred said he need to go home for lunch and rode off on his bicycle. Sugar Foot and I ran across the street and told Granddaddy what had happened.

Granddaddy gave us buckets of water and a ladder to climb up the tree to the hole. By the time Sugar Foot and I got back across the road to the tree, flames were coming from the hole. Frantically, we climbed the ladder, poured water in the hole, then raced across the street for more water.

A crowd of people gathered by the tree to watch Sugar Foot and me work but it was no use. The fire was burning too deep in the tree for our buckets of water to put it out. Granddaddy was sad but he said to stop pouring water in the tree.

The next day was Sunday and the stores were closed. After church, Dad drove our car around town. He said the mayor had someone cut down the tree. Pieces of wood from the tree was still smoking on the ground.

Oakland went through tough times in the next few years. The railroad company stopped the train and took up the tracks. People began driving to supermarkets in Memphis to buy their groceries. This hurt Oakland small businesses like Granddaddy's store. And, the country changed during this time too. Many people on small farms moved away to get better jobs in factories.

Sugarfoot and I seldom saw each other after that weekend. In high school, we hung around in different groups of friends. But I will always remember the day that we fought the tree fire beside the railroad tracks.